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THE TRUE AIMS OF AMERICAN AMBITION. 



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ADDRESS 



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PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE. 



GETTYSBURG, SEPTEMBER 15, 1852. 



BY 
RO BERT T. CONRAD 



PHILADELPHIA: 

CEISSY & MAEKLEY, PRINTERS, GOLDSMITHS' HALL, LIBRARY ST. 

1852. 






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THE TRUE AIMS OF AMERICAN AMBITION. 



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ADDRESS 



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PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE. 



GETTYSBURG, SEPTEMBER 15, 1852. 



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BY 
ROBERT T. CONRAD 



PHILADELPHIA: 

CRISSY & MAKKLEY, PRINTERS, GOLDSMITHS' HALL, LIBRARY ST. 

1852. 



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In exchange 

Pea body Institute 

Baltimore 

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PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE, GETTYSBURG. 

Wednesday Evening, September 15, 1852. 

Hon. R. T. Conead, 

Dear Sib :— The Literary Societies of Pennsylvania College, tender to you, 
through us, their sincere thanks for the truly chaste, eloquent and forcible 
Address delivered by you this evening, at their request ; and respectfully solicit 
a copy for publication. 

Your compliance will much oblige, 

Your obedient servants, 

G. H. SPANG, J. W. KREGALO, 

R. HILL, T. W. KEMP, 

J;-W. HOSSLER, T. T. TITUS, 

tToint Committee of Societies. 



PHILADELPHIA, October 25, 1852. 
Gentlemen : — 

It is a source of regret to me, that the same cause which made the pre- 
paration of the Address delivered before your Societies, on the 15th of Sep- 
tember, culpably hurried, has rendered my compliance with your flattering 
request for a copy, as culpably tardy. I trust that the imperative requisitions 
of other and interfering duties, which, in each instance, induced the fault, will 

also plead its pardon. 

With great respect, 

Very truly y our' s, etc., 

R. T. CONRAD. 



MR. G. H. SPANG, 
" R. HILL, 
<' J. W. HOSSLER, 



MR. J. W. KREGALO, 
" T. W. KEMP, 
" T. T. TITUS, 

Joint Committee of Societies of Fenn. College. 



ADDRESS. 



As the day dawned upon the ^gean sea, more than two thou- 
sand years ago, all Athens gathered at the port of Ph^aeus, to 
witness the departure, to distant seas and doubtful battles, of 
the most powerful and magnificent fleet and army that had ever 
floated upon the Mediterranean. It bore the flower of the 
Athenian chivalry to the contemplated conquest of Sicily; and 
the eager spirit of that excitable people flushed to anticipate 
the triumph. Pomp and splendor were exhausted upon the glit- 
tering armament ; and, when the trumpet sounded, as the first 
rays of the sun lighted the Acropolis, the prayers of priests, the 
hymns of women and the shouts of men arose from the count- 
less multitude ; and thousands of golden cups poured the red 
libation ; and thousands of upraised hands implored the blessings 
of their guardian Minerva, upon that brilliant and exulting fleet, 
as it bore away before the -S]gean breeze to swell, with a new 
conquest, the giddy Queen of the Sea. Let them enjoy their 
triumph : it is their last ! Let them gaze upon the receding 
sails and streamers — they will never behold them again ! Fleet 
and army soon strewed the beach of Syracuse; and though 
Athens, long after, refused to believe the tale of terror, and 



sentenced to death, the wretched fugitive who told it — it was not 
the less true : they perished ; and Ayith them — there, in that 
distant port, — perished the glory of Athens. As Cicero has well 
said: Mo p7^imwn opes illius civitatis victce, comminutce, de- 
pressceque sunt ; in hoc portu, Atheniensum nohilitatis imperii^ 
gloriicB naufragium factum existimatur. 

What a contrast is presented to this arrogant adventure of 
wrong and rapine, by the departure and return of that high and 
holy enterprise which, many ages after, and when Athens and 
Syracuse were remembered dreams, left the port of Palos to dare 
an unknown ocean and an unknown fate ! Their feeble vessels 
glittered with no pomp and blazed with no anticipated triumph ; 
and though friends were there, pale and anxious, to bid a falter- 
ing Grod speed to the majestic Columbus and his hardy followers, 
no shout broke the silence ; and their adieus were uttered amid 
tears, and prayers, and hopes that trembled like terrors. The 
sea, whose untracked waste they entered upon, stretched before 
them — as the expanse of time, my young friends, stretches 
before you — chartless and limitless; and they sought, as you 
seek, a world — the Atlantis of Plato, the vision of the poet and 
philosopher for ages. Launched upon that sea, their aim the 
loftiest that ever lifted human ambition, how did they return? 
A continent leaned forward to receive them. Princes and 
monarchs hastened to give them welcome. They had sought a 
world and won it ; and, amid prayers and rejoicings, the ring- 
ing of bells and the firing of cannon, Columbus displayed the 
evidences and trophies of that achievement which made him im- 
mortal, and changed the aspect and destinies of the world. 

This scene and this occasion force memories like these upon 
the mind ; and those memories flash their light upon the present 



and the future. We stand by the shore of the vast sea of life, 
upon which is launched an enterprize of "great pith and mo- 
ment," for the happy fate of which a thousand hearts beat 
anxiously. That ocean, — how often soever traversed, however 
crowded even now by other barks — is, to you, but conjecturally 
known. You only know that it is the home of storm and sun- 
shine, of peril and triumph ; of rocks and eddies that menace 
death, of isles and shores that promise fame and fortune : but 
of the event of that dim voyage, who knows but that Being, 
who "maketh a way in the sea and a path in the mighty 
waters ?" The spectacle, animating and cheerful, lighted by 
eyes of love and softened by tones of melody, is yet one which 
thoughtful eyes cannot look upon without anxious interest. The 
young voyagers tread the deck, and look forth upon the waves 
and their far horizon, with hearts of hope and conMence — that 
hope with which youth halos all the future — that confidence 
which ever waits upon conscious health and strength and daring. 
Of those who stand upon the beach to watch the departure 
of this gay and gallant fleet, all have wishes and prayers for 
their prosperity ; but though some there are who, like the 
Athenians upon the Pirasus, hail, in their future, only certain 
conquest and triumph, there are others who, like the watchers 
that paled at the departure of Columbus, feel their earnest aspi- 
rations " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and who 
tremble while they trust. 

Will it be churlish, even now, amid all this exuberance of joy 
and hope and confidence, to pause and reflect a moment on the 
direction and duties of those voyagers ; the aims, aspirations 
and rewards of that voyage ? This has, in like cases, been done 



a thousand times. The occasion has never been when the theme 
was not old — the time will never come when that theme will not 
be, in its ever varying and momentous applications, new. And 
yet the knowledge that aspires to direct human action seldom 
avails, with the youthful, till enforced by experience. The 
blooming heroes of Pompey's army, laughed at the scarred 
veterans who foretold the rough truths which Pharsalia rea- 
lized. The sea of life has no rocks to the fresh mariner, but 
those on which himself is shattered. But even the confident 
and generous spirit of Hope, may pause to study what tri- 
umphs — inasmuch as triumphs must be won — are worth the win- 
ning. This, then, be our grateful study. 

What generous spirit is that which has attended and stimu- 
lated your cloistered labors; trimmed your midnight lamp ; and 
led you, through the toils of your probation, to this your start- 
ing triumph ? It is the same that inspired Homer and Ar- 
chimides ; that lit the councils of Sesostris and CaBsar ; that has 
impelled mankind in all climes and ages — difi"ering in all else, 
but alike in this — to struggle upwards and seek the better — the 
better — and still and ever, the better. This it is that dis- 
tinguishes man from all others of God's creatures, as indefi- 
nitely progressive — panting to attain, and capable of attaining, 
a rank, in the scale of being, so far above his origin, as to con- 
stitute him almost a different creature. And this proves the 
glorious immortality of his spirit; for supreme wisdom would 
never have endowed him with this boundless desire, and sub- 
lime power, of expansion, to confine its development within a 
sphere so inadequate and unworthy as the present existence. 
It is this impulse of progression, this ethereal spark, ambition, 



that lias urged our race to its present stage of improvement and 
elevation ; and that promises light for the future, to which the 
radiance of the past is but a shadow. For when and while 
human progress is in the path of divine truth — and no longer — 
there is no limit to its career, no bound to its triumphs. Then, 
too, science, freedom, dominion and happiness follow in its 
train. It is only where it walks with guilt, that decay and wo 
control and check it. So long as ambition can exist and aspire 
free from that weight, it will, by its own empyreal buoyancy, 
rise ; rise to an elevation beyond human imagination or human 
hope ; rise until 

"Its head wears sunbeams and its feet touch stars." 

In proportion as this aspiring principle in man is active or 
dull, individuals and nations are vigorous or feeble ; as it is 
lofty or sordid, they are noble or degraded ; as it is pure or 
corrupt, they are happy or wretched ; as it is wise or wander- 
ing, they are conquerors or conquered. 

The ambition of the youthful is ever generous and noble. The 
passion of the unscarred aspirant is for renown ; and in its pur- 
suit it is easy to scale the heavens ; every burthen is light and 
every peril is lovely. This burning spirit exclaims with Percy : — 

Oh ! the blood more stirs, 
To rouse a lion than to start a hare. 
By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, 
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon ; 
Or dive into the bottom of the deep, 
Where fathom line could never touch the ground, 
And pluck up drowned Honour by the locks ; 
So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear 
Without a corrival, all her dignities." 



10 

After years, ■when the cold breath of the world has chilled the 
generous ardour of the heart, may, and too often do, acknow- 
ledge idols more sordid : but when, in the flush and morning of 
life, ambition pours its slant glory over the soul, it lights up 
hopes and desires yet incorrupt and beautiful in the dewy fresh- 
ness of nature. The aspirant then seeks renown — but with no 
selfish aim. He would kindle a holy fire upon the altar of fame, 
that it may warm and light the hearts he cherishes. He would 
win, by deeds of noble emprize, the brightest wreath — but it 
would be to lay it at a parent's feet. How glorious the privi- 
lege, thus to repay the untold treasures of a parent's love ! For 
what has earth so lofty, so pure, so free from selfish and earthy 
taint, as that affection which yearns over a child ; which watches 
and hopes, labors and lives, struggles through the weariness of 
the day, and ponders and prays through the watches of the 
night, to lift his spirit up to lofty aims and fit him for a career 
of worth and honor. Life has no triumph so noble — none so 
pure and sweet — as when the youthful aspirant, glowing with 
joy and pride, lays his first laurel-leaf before his father; and 
sees the thoughtful brow flush with parental exultation, and the 
fond eye fill with tremulous tenderness, over the fulfilment of a 
father's prayers, the fruition of a father's hopes. Happy the son 
who has won this crown : the future has, can have, no brighter 
one. The ambition that bears such fruit — richer than that of 
the Hesperides — may well be cherished ; for the reward of such 
a son will be the blessing of the Father of all. 

But let us enquire, to what special cause, what peculiar duty, 
should the energies of such an ambition, virtuous, elevated and 
earnest, be devoted? 



11 

The aspirant is an American: what cause, then, shall dare 
claim the first fruits of his genius and his heart, but that of his 
country? He loves her, with the gushing fulness and unselfish 
devotion of the heart's first and purest love. How could he 
otherwise ? Her soil claims a parent's right to that love ; and 
were it churlish as winter, could he love it less than the Switzer 
loves his clifis ? Were it torrid as Arabia, could he cherish it 
less than the Bedouin his sands ? But the grandeur and beauty 
of the boon land of his birth, where lavish Nature seems to have 
gathered her wonders as for a race of free giants — the cloistered 
aisles of her sublime and solemn forests — the cataract voices 
that thunder among her hills — the glorious rivers that sweep, with 
queenly magnificence, among valleys the loveliest that the 
zephyr visits — how could these be his own, and be unloved ? 
And then her annals, rich in the unrivalled triumphs of a calm 
and christian heroism — her valor, her virtues, but more than all 
her liberty, calm and crimeless, lofty and self-restrained, that 
lifts her above all ancient or modern comparison — the morning 
star of the nations ! Why, he were duller than the dullest clod 
of her vallies, did not his heart swell with exulting gratitude to 
the God that had made such a land, and made him a child upon 
its bosom. It is wise, therefore, and well, that he loves his 
native land, and loves it thus ; not with a cold sense of filial duty 
merely — the trickling of an icicle patriotism — but with a full and 
fiery passion ; that regards one life as too poor an offering for 
such a country, yet would give it, freely, as the sun gives its light 
or the heaven its dew — would pour out his young, warm blood 
exultingly in the battle, and bless, each sacrificial drop as it bub- 
bled forth. Oh, more than mountains and rivers, than wealth 
and prowess, than greatness and splendour, is this spirit the true 



12 

glory of our land ! And this spirit, let me add, is no idle dream, 
no loftj fiction. It is a presence and a reality ; it lives and moves 
and has its being in every pulsation of the mighty heart of our 
country : and should the shadow darken and the peril come, it 
will start forth mightier than any mere throWess physical power, 
to save and to achieve. It is this passion of patriotism that 
can alone make a people free and happy. The dull devotion of 
enforced allegiance or unfelt duty may shed a cold, lunar light 
over a land; hut it is the heat of the solar heart alone that 
can vivify and invigorate, can render feebleness invincible, and 
make, what would else be a polar desolation, a scene of beauty — 
a glory and a joy. 

But let us ask the young enthusiast, what is it that you covet, 
what would you win, for this land of your love ? And his heart 
leaps, with the response, to his lips: "All — all! All that skill 
and power, genius and courage can achieve for her. I would 
make her very paupers princes — would velvet every valley with 
green, and diadem every mountain with palaces. Her wealth 
should be universal as her soil — her will should be a destiny; 
her armies should be a consuming fire, and her fleets should 
sweep the seas, as the hurricane cloud sweeps the heavens. The 
sun should not rise with a radiance like her glory ; nor set, in his 
eternal revolutions, upon her limits !" How wretched were man, 
should every prayer be heard and every wish be gratified ! Well 
for us, in our blindness, is it that there is 

"A Divinity 
Which shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may." 

Observe how fatally misdirected would be the patriotism that 
cherished such aims or sought such results for its country. 



13 

Equal and general ■wealth, if desirable, is impossible ; and, if 
our Mississippi were transformed to a Pactolus, pouring an ocean 
of gold througbthe land, it would be still impossible. There may 
be, to a considerable degree there happily is, an equality of com- 
petence ; but even that can only exist where toil is universal and 
rewarded. Wealth is comparative, and is only known in the 
presence of a subject poverty. Where one slumbers another 
must sweat : but where all rest, who will labour ? where all are 
lords, who will be servants ? If attainable, national wealth, in 
excess, is a doubtful blessing. 

" m fares the land, to hastening griefs a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 

It is inconsistent with vigor and hardiness ; for without neces- 
sity there is no industry, and without industry there can be 
neither moral nor physical health. Labor alone can secure vigor, 
virtue, valor and freedom. Soils and climes that dispense with 
toil, tendering, from the exuberance of nature, an unsolicited 
subsistence, exhibit human nature in its basest degradation and 
wretchedness. The decay of republics may be ascribed rather 
to sloth than to any other cause. The existence of domestic 
slavery among the Greeks, and the consequent idleness of the 
citizens, especially the Spartans and Athenians, was the spring 
of their every social and political evil. While the Romans were 
poor and toiled, they were worthy of freedom, and were free ; 
when conquest introduced slaves, and the masters of the world 
were relieved from labour, they sank into a debasement which, 
though it shines like phosphorescent putrefaction, presents, when 
studied minutely, a picture of human nature more revolting than 
that of the lowest class of human brutes in Africa. The law is 



14 

universal and unrelenting. It is written in the epitaphs of 
buried nations ; for where are those cities of the past that made 
the world's eye dim, gazing at their splendor? The prayer of 
the patriot should be that of Agar : " Give me neither poverty 
nor riches."* He should desire for his country only the unre- 
strained and undiscouraged right to toil — the inestimable liberty 
of labor. Man's highest privilege and noblest glory, his 
truest security and richest blessing, is virtuous, brave, lofty- 
browed labor. Its days are days of honor, and its nights are 
nights of peace. It is the parent, not only of independence and 
courage, of virtue and tranquillity, but also of science and the 
arts, of all that lifts the mind to truth and the moral nature to 
God. While wealth shrinks, with a corrupt frame and coward 
heart, into lazar-like sloth and infamy, toil treads the earth with 
the step of a giant and the port of a conqueror, and looks up to 
heaven with the broad brow of conscious virtue, courage and 
liberty. This is true dignity — true affluence; and while we 
possess it, we need no higher rank, no better riches. 

It is true, that a certain degree of competence is required, to 
secure for a people leisure and means for study and improve- 
ment ;t but these we possess. Indolence has no leisure ; and 
luxury, though its vices are too often called refinements, boasts 



* Freedom Tvith Virtue takes her seat : 
Her proper place, her only scene 
Is in the golden mean ; 
She lives not with the sordid or the great. Coicley. 

f But for one end, one much neglected use, 

Are riches ■worth your care, (for nature's "wants 

Are few, and without opulence supplied:) 

This noble end is to produce the soul. Armstrong. 



15 

few arts that virtue need envy. Even its amusements are pur- 
sued to a guilty excess that chokes and suppresses every man- 
lier aim and occupation. The nations which boast the greatest 
excellence in those frivolous arts by which time is degraded and 
sacrificed, and life frittered, like a toy, away, are in every case 
softened to enervation and refined to vice. It is a doubtful 
recommendation that no noble nor manly trait has been able to 
survive this engrossing zeal for such pursuits ; and it may be 
questioned, whether the character or happiness of our people is 
likely to be promoted, by the efforts made to introduce those arts 
which constitute the only boast of the communities in which 
they flourish, but in which virtue, freedom and manly truth are 
strangers. The refinements and pleasures of christian virtue 
afford happiness enough for freemen : those of luxury, idleness 
and sensual licence may be left to the races of men who are 
content to be slaves, and of women who are willing to be their 
companions. 

If the ambition that craves national wealth be a dangerous 
delusion, that which fosters the lust of territorial acquisition, 
whether by conquest, purchase or policy, is still more menacing. 
Of course, I would not trench upon any past or present subject 
of political controversy. The instinct of national acquisition is 
selfish, and therefore universal. No nation has ever declined an 
extension of its domain. When Augustus left, as a legacy, his 
counsel that the empire should be confined within the Rhine 
and Euphrates, the desert and the ocean, it was ascribed to the 
fact that Rome had more to fear than to hope from the chance 
of arms. And when, reverting to this policy, the conquests of 
Trajan were relinquished by his successor — for the god Termi- 



16 

nus, who presides over boundaries, and had refused to yield place 
to Jupiter, submitted to the authority of Hadrian, — the act was 
attributed not to moderation, but to envy. But universal as is 
this grasping disposition, let us hope that wiser councils will 
make us in this, as in our destiny, a contrast to the rupublics of 
old. Territory is desired as an accession of power ; but, beyond 
a moderate point, it ceases to impart strength. A nation is 
strong as it is "well compact;" acquisition often expands and 
enfeebles it. A fortress is more defensible than a city ; a city 
than the open country ; a well-knit and consolidated frame, than 
one unwieldy and bloated ; and thus an expanded and diffused 
empire is more exposed and less defensible. It is the people of 
a country, not its acres, that make its power. What constitutes 
a State ? asks Sir Wm. Jones. 

What constitutes a State ? 

Not high-raised battlement and labor'd mound ; 
Thick wall or moated gate ; 

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crown'd ; 
Nor bays and broad arm'd ports, 

Where laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 
Not starr'd and spangled courts 

Where low-bred baseness wafts perfume to pride : 
No ; men — high-minded men.* 

* Byron has expressed the thought with no less vigour — 

"Why, nature's self detains the victoi''s car ; 

And makes your land impregnable, if earth 
Could be so : but alone she will not war, 

Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth, 
In a soil where the mothers bring forth men : 

Not so with those whose souls are little worth ; 
For them no fortress can avail, — the den 

Of the poor reptile that preserves its sting, 
Is more secure than walls of adamant, when 

The hearts of those within are quivering." 



17 

Expanded territory may present a sickly show of strength ; 
but the union, the home- spirit, the patriotism of a well-knit 
people, constitute the greatest, perhaps the only element of 
national power. 

Acquisition is prompted also by a false love of national glory ; 
yet it is fatal to that glory. There is no real glory in plenitude 
of territory, or Mahoney might be envied ; or in millions of 
population, or China would be unrivalled. True renown lives 
only in great deeds or great virtues — the acts of men, not the 
stage on which they perform. But still grosser is the delusion 
that the vanity of territorial possessions inspires love or pride 
of country. The contrary is emphatically true, and the reason 
is apparent. Every feeling of the human bosom is strongest 
when concentrated — feeblest when diffused. Thus, love, friend- 
ship, benevolence, grow thinner by expansion ; until, like circles 
in the water, weakening as they widen, they are lost in unmarked 
ripples. The ductile gold of patriotic sentiment may be stretched 
to glitter over half a world, but it will glitter only. The smallest 
nations, those whose home and country were the same, afford us 
all our examples of devoted patriotism : need I refer to the 
Grecian, Italian and Dutch republics? The Roman devotion 
was sublime, while Rome was their country; but where was it 
when the world was Rome ? The voice of home, that spoke, in 
the tones and with the authority of heaven, on the Tiber, was 
unheard or unheeded in the faint echoes that hardly vibrated 
over the Euphrates. The throb that was mighty at Rome, the 
heart, was lost in feeble and fluttering pulsations in Parthia or 
Caledonia, the extremities. Nor is there anything in American 
patriotism to exempt it from this universal law. I desire no 
2 



18 

irrational contraction of empire : but, as we are, there is enough 
of territory for the head and heart to compass. When our 
country shall have filled up with a homogeneous people ; when 
the moss shall have grown upon her boundary towers ; when her 
gristle shall have hardened into bone ; when her love shall have 
ripened into veneration, and her loyalty become a nature; — then 
it will be time for ambition to ask for more. 

It is common to urge an expansion of empire as the means of 
extending free principles. The readier, safer, and less suspicious 
mode, is by the peaceful proclamation of truth and the silent 
eloquence of example. The propagandism of craft or conquest 
is seldom recognized by truth or welcomed by humanity. Con- 
quest corrupts and crushes the victor and the victim alike. The 
freemen of Greece and Rome subdued, in turn, the world ; did 
they leave it more free or happy ? or were not their triumphs 
the doom of the human race ? No, the cause of right and truth 
needs no such auxiliaries. Its light will rise over the world, 
if at all, as the sun rises, in tranquil and gradual glory ; and not 
burst forth like volcanoes, in earthquake and thunder, throwing 
its lurid light, and pouring its lava-torrent, over an affrighted 
people and a desolated land. 

The thoughtful friends of human freedom should remember, 
that Providence has ever preferred small to large nations, as the 
depositories of liberty and the examples of exalted patriotism, 
advanced civilization and lofty public spirit. The old world 
history is uniform in this testimony : and it is the division of 
modern Europe into various independent nations, and the 
mutual watchfulness and emulation, vigour and courage thus 
produced, that have given birth to the civilization which, com- 



19 

pared to that of the ancients, is as mid-daj to a dubious torch- 
light ; that have originated systems of free representative govern- 
ment ; that have rescued Christianity from relapsed Paganism, 
by the Reformation ; and that have given to the human mind a 
progressive impulse which nothing can stay, but the unfortunate 
aggregation of power in one vast empire, as is menaced by the 
possible precipitation of Russia, like a crushing mountain, upon 
the divided sovereignties of the West and South. 

But the peril which American patriotism most dreads — dreads 
with a terror which is anguish — is the inevitable tendency of 
overgrown empires to dissolution. The past has many instances 
of this result — but not one of escape from it. Can the lesson 
be lost upon us? The federative bond of union, though silken, 
is strong; but acquisition has already strained it, until patriot 
hearts grew faint and patriot courage trembled. There are 
limits to every human power ; what may be the point beyond 
which our sj^'stem may not be stretched over different nations 
and races, soils and seas, various in their character, language, 
habits and sentiments, and opposite in their ambition and in- 
terests — who can determine ? And who, so rash and reckless, 
so false to his country, so regardless of the world's brightest, but 
latest hope, as experimentally to try ? To the true patriot, the 
country, the government, the homes and hopes of our fathers, 
are empire and glory enough. That ambition is frenzy, which 
would stake them upon the truth of a dream, or the fate of a 
chimera. 

If not to national wealth nor national acquisition, where shall 
the ambition of the patriot turn ? To military and naval prowess 
and glory ? Shall the tread of our armies shake the bosom of 



20 

the startled earth, and the thunder of our fleets — more potent 
than the scourge of Xerxes — affright the subject ocean? The 
people that win opulence or empire at the expense of others are, 
by profession, robbers, and must rely upon fleets and armies : 
but a nation just and right-respecting, what need has it, save 
for self-defence, of wars and warriors ? Hallowed by right and 
necessity, the patriot soldier's is a holy calling ; and earth knows 
no spectacle of greater moral sublimity, than a brave and free 
people nobly contending for their birth-right. Our annals are 
radiant with this virtue — when the mother armed her boy in 
defence of their hearth-stone, and he went forth, with her kisses 
upon his lip and her blessing in his heart, to strike down the 
invader or to die. And I thank heaven that the same rich 
blood still swells American, hearts, impatient to burst forth upon 
the altar sacred to freedom, and the same spirit still burns that 
made the halls of Nassau a fortification, and her students heroes 
in our revolution. That spirit would, if need were, renew the 
noble scene, even within these revered walls ; young breasts 
would again be bared, emulous, in such a cause, of the luxury of 
suffering or the privilege of death; and if that glorious privilege 
were won, young lips would murmur — as the life stream flowed 
and the death-film gathered — Dulce et decorum est pro patria 
mori! But it is this sentiment only, that can dignify the art of 
homicide. The love of war, for itself, whether as a national or 
individual passion, is beneath the dignity of human nature. 
Cherished for the frivolous splendor by which it ministers to an 
execrable but barbaric vanity, for dress and decoration, plume 
and banner, 

the quality, 
Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious -w&v, 



21 

it is •wortliy only the contempt of all who rank above idiot and 
empty self-idolaters. The impulse that urges war or seeks mili- 
tary life for its sanguinary excitement, is one that is shared 
with the ravening wolf, which, overcloyed, still slays, or with the 
Moloch of Milton. This appetite for blood neither constitutes 
nor characterizes courage. The bravest nations have ever been 
those who wage no wars but in self-defence. The insanity that 
permits ambitious soldiers to sluice the veins of empires, to 
waste realms, find music in the shrieks of outraged innocence, 
and pastime in white hairs dabbled in blood, or infant forms 
struggling on pikes — and all this to win a feather for the master 
murderer, — is a mystery which philosophy has never solved. 
That this is guilt, is horror, we know: but how is it glory? 
Perhaps I may be pardoned a quotation from an unpublished 
work of my own : 

Can the white hand of pure and holy Right, 

Be in the hue of human slaughter dyed ? 
Can piety a pretext find to smite, 
, Making libation of the gash'd heart's tide ? 

What right to quench that flame — to heaven allied — 

Which earth can ne'er relume ? Could human deed, 
Have driven our Saviour to a homicide ? 

Dread should the danger be, and dire the need, 
That asks one sacred life or bids a nation bleed ! 

For all defensive purposes, our country has of the war spirit 
enough and to spare. Indiscreetly fostered, encouraged, as it 
too often is, from absurd ostentation, it is unwise and dangerous. 
It is a petted tiger that may, in some sudden mood of its up- 
roused nature, turn upon and tear its master. It may seek or 
make an occasion in our sectional or party difficulties, and a 
field amid our hill-sides and valleys. Upon the measureless 



22 

horrors of such a consummation, I dare not draw your eyes even 
for a moment. But let the shadow of that passing thought rest 
long enough upon your minds, to disclose the perils of the 
ambition that would cherish an excessive military spirit in our 
people, or win, by unblessed wars, a military glory for our 
country. 

Is there nothing, then, that a patriotic ambition should seek 
for our country? Nothing worthy the high aspirations and 
devoted efforts of the young citizen, just entering the busy arena 
of life ? Much ! much ! Enough to engage every energy, enlist 
every aspiration, and reward every hope. Let him regard the 
nation in its true light, as a great family ; and let him seek for 
it those triumphs and blessings, which a good man would ask, 
from heaven, for the circle that is gathered around his fire-side, 
or shaded by his roof-tree. Let him desire for his country the 
power that will impart security ; the security that will guaran- 
tee peace ; the competence that will avert dependence and 
penury, and the honor that will confer self-respect and the 
respect of others. Beneath the shade and shelter of these, 
every good that can bless and brighten a people may be fostered. 
But these may seem, to the enthusiast, but homely and undaz- 
zling attainments. They are so — plain as the elements " that 
clip us round about" — as the air we breathe, the water Ave drink, 
and the fire that warms the earth that sustains us — but not less 
valuable, not less vital. We may be thoughtlessly ungrateful, 
with them — but would perish without them. It is the great, the 
fearful error of the American mind and heart, that no privation 
has aroused us to a sense of our unbounded opulence, in all the 
blessings with which a nation can be endowed, and with which 



23 

God — (no7i 7iohis — non nobis — we owe all to a gracious Provi- 
dence) with which God has favored us. Our health cannot 
appreciate its own happiness, nor realize the diseases with 
which the world beside is wasted ; and our unstartled security 
smiles at dangers, from which a miracle of mercy alone protects 
us. How profound should be our gratitude ; how earnest our 
efforts to merit, to preserve, and to extend the blessings vouch- 
safed to us ! The patriot can hardly doubt as to the true aims 
of Ainerican ambition, while these duties invoke him to guard 
the freedom which our race has never before been found worthy, 
save in a limited degree and for a brief season, to enjoy ; to ex- 
pand and elevate the popular mind ; to stimulate the progress 
that is led by reason and illustrated by virtue ; to exalt and en- 
lighten the councils of his country, wedding them to justice and 
honour, and inspiring that spirit which, while it would sooner 
proudly perish than meanly submit, would rather endure wrong 
than be guilty of it ; to mould her character to true greatness 
and her destiny to real felicity ; and to cherish her peace next 
only to her right and her honour ; but, in the hour of her need, 
to maintain her cause until every sinew is cracked and every 
vein exhausted. 

The patriotic objects which dignify American ambition, are 
to be secured by exertions worthy of them. Such exertions 
are to be expected only from wise and virtuous public councils ; 
and such councils can only be secured by wisdom and virtue in 
the body of the people. The ambition of the patriot should 
acknowledge, as its first and final aim, the cultivation, in himself 
and in his fellow citizens, of those qualities which constitute an 
enlightened and worthy man ; for the best citizen, whatsoever 



24 

his position in society, whatsoever his sphere of action — is the 
best patriot. 

It is, perhaps, as important to realize what patriotism does not 
demand, as what it does; for erroneous views prevail, not only as 
to the objects of government, but as to the position and duty of 
the citizen in regard to it. Thus, it is an error to imagine 
that men are made for the State, (as in Sparta, the government 
of which was not only artificial, but at war with nature,) and not 
the State made for men; and that to promote the interests of 
government, sacrifices must be made of the interests of the 
people. When government is properly constituted, it knows no 
interests, no existence, apart from the people ; and needs and asks 
no sacrifices for itself. It is also an error to expect from govern- 
ment positive advantages and blessings for the people, beyond 
protection and security. In Greece and Rome, the people were 
supplied with largesses of land and corn, and with amusements, by 
the government ; and the governments of the continent at the 
present day, supply the masses with recreations. These are 
aside from the true purposes of government, and where they 
exist, result in the corruption and oppression of the people. 
The American maxim is, that the world is governed too much ; 
and the American freeman asks from his government, only pro- 
tection and exemption from wrong : he is the architect of his own 
fate. And the government asks, except in the exigencies of 
public danger, but little political service from him, and none that 
interferes or should interfere with the main duties of private life, 
duties upon which the welfare of society really depends. The 
man who inflames his passions to madness, by party zeal, may 
delude himself with the belief that patriotism demands the sacri- 



25 

fice ; but he does Lis country and himself a wrong. The idler 
who neglects the duties of his home, to deyote himself, at the 
tap-room or the caucus board, to his country, may lay the same 
flattering unction to his soul: but never was man more mis- 
taken. The patriot who convinces himself that his beloved 
country can only be rescued from impending ruin by his eleva- 
tion, or that of his favorite, to office, may soothe his perturbed 
spirit : the country will doubtless survive the apprehended cala- 
mity. This disposition to exaggerate such excitements, and to 
relieve the land from distressful fate by clamorous interposi- 
tion, reminds one of the efforts of savages to aid the moon, by 
horns and drums and every imaginable din, while she is strug- 
gling through the horrors and perils of an eclipse : she resumes 
her light, and her noisy auxiliaries claim the full credit of 
having saved her — as our country is every few months saved — 
from inevitable and overwhelming destruction. 

The real and great triumph of American ambition in regard 
to the country, is the diligent, honorable, and ardent perform- 
ance of duty in the sphere chosen. It is the aggregate of these 
individual duties that constitutes the great impulse which is lift- 
ing up our country to true greatness. He who is true to him- 
self, is true to the circle of which he is the centre — is true to 
the interests with which he is connected — is true to society and 
to his country. That which enlightens, purifies, elevates and 
renders happy, the individuals of the mass, subserves the wel- 
fare of the mass itself. The useful citizen is therefore a sound 
patriot. And usefulness, whatever its sphere, is honor ; for 

Honor and shame from no condition rise. 



26 

That is a false view of honor which connects it ever with 
certain visible triumphs, or supposed triumphs, as wealth, splen- 
dor, official or social rank. And nowhere is this false estimate 
more frequently made, than in equal America — shame upon us 
that it is so ! Nowhere are the pregnant hinges of the knee 
crooked with a readier homage to empty and idle pretensions to 
rank, for here all such pretensions are idle, to the idiot arrogance 
of gold, or to the eminent meanness of official elevation — the 
giant pedestal of dwarfish imbecility. Defective education 
points out these as the objects of ambition, and makes every 
class yesty with a spirit of envy and discontent. "Never be 
satisfied till you are what you may be. President of the nation," 
says this sordid and false spirit. A wiser pride would say, 
" Your duty performed, be satisfied in any sphere." Strangers 
note, with wonder, the malcontent, restless and unhappy spirit 
of our people, who, possess what blessings they may, murmur 
for those still unattained ; and are wretched over every triumph, 
of wealth, or rank, or place, enjoyed by another. This clouds 
every brow, disturbs every pillow, and stimulates into restless- 
ness and agitation, all the land. The spirit of liberty is held 
accountable for this, but wrongfully : it is the result of defective 
education — of false ambition — of an absurd deference to a paltry 
mushroom aristocracy, vulgar, ignorant, and unworthy ; but in- 
solent, arrogant, and ostentatious. 

This perversion of ambition, it is, that has overthronged the 
professions ; that averts the hopes and efforts of aspirants away 
from pursuits of production, from the honorable arts of manly 
labor, mechanics and agriculture ; that crowds the land with 



27 

professional idlers; swells and inflames cities into vast social 
gangrenes; and engenders and concretes a large population of 
adventurers, eager for any scheme, however wild or however 
guilty, that promises a short cut (such is the phrase) to fortune 
and power. Immeasurably superior, in true honor, is the calm, 
enlightened, virtuous and happy husbandman, who performs 
every duty within his own sphere, surrounds himself with 
an atmosphere of gratitude, affection and joy, and looks from 
his moral elevation, with conscious scorn and pity, down upon 
the varnished meanness, paltry pride, and lofty wretchedness of 
the struggling and vulgar aspirants below him ! 

The tendency of well-directed individual ambition, is always 
to promote the true interests of society. The first great duty 
is that Avhich begins at home, and radiates thence, through the 
different relations of life. If that centre be not fixed, there can 
be no trust in the remoter circumference. Home is, to man's 
field of action, what the heart is to the body^ — the centre and 
citadel of health and strength and life. If duty has not a 
vigorous existence there, it is vain to look for it elsewhere. The 
destiny of a nation is determined in its homes. There, or no- 
where, its wealth, virtue, freedom and happiness are forged. 
Well said ^^schines, against Ctesiphon, that : "he who is 
insensible to that natural affection which should engage his 
heart to those who are most intimate and near to him, can never 
feel a greater regard to your welfare, (that of the Athenian 
people,) than to that of strangers. He who acts wickedly in 
private life, cannot prove excellent in his public conduct ; he 
who is base at Jiome, can never acquit himself with honor, when 



28 

sent to a strange country in a public character." This senti- 
ment has been still more nobly expressed by the Christian 
poet : — 

" For when was public virtue to be found, 
Where private was not ? Can he love the whole, 
Who loves no part ? He be a nation's friend, 
Who is in truth the friend of no man there ? 
Can he be strenuous in his country's cause, 
Who slights the charities, for whose dear sake 
That country, if at all, must be beloved." 

Some virtues are not only the loftiest, but the only virtues, for 
those dispensed elsewhere are born at home. They are not 
only the truest reliance for the freedom and happiness of a 
country, but the only reliance. That patriot does most for his 
country who contributes most, by example, influence and in- 
struction, to the happiness, pride and devotion of her homes. 
Greece had no homes, or none worthy of the name, and she 
had, therefore, no virtues. The assertion may seem daring, 
but is true. While the employments and pleasures of the Romans 
were at home, and they were so to the time of the Gracchi ; 
while her mothers were the teachers and counsellors of her 
heroes and statesmen, (and such they were,) Rome was free. 

Alas, for earth ! for never shall we see 

The brightness in her eye, she bore when Rome was free ! 

You will ask, do you consider the virtues of home, the appro- 
bation of parents, the happiness of wife and children, exalted 
aims of ambition, and of patriot ambition, too ? It is precisely 
what I do think. And age will not bring wisdom to you, or the 



29 

time will come, when you will think with me ; when you will he 
more proud of a parent's praise than of a party's acclaim ; 
and think that to be the chief magistrate of a virtuous and well- 
ordered home — a home that is God's home — is the noblest 
triumph of a noble ambition; above, far above, the cringing 
triumphs of courts — the degradation of a public slave, or the 
bolder baseness of a public master. 

Let it not be supposed, that the sphere of the just ambition 
which I have described, is limited ; that its labors are necessa- 
rily light, its achievements contracted, or its triumphs small. 
The whole world of duty is before it. While there is a science 
unexhausted, the aspirant's labors are not closed ; while there 
is a human wrong to be redressed, a human woe to be relieved, 
an earth to be served, or a Heaven to be won, his noble ambi- 
tion will not tire. By performing his duty to himself and to 
those around him, he acquits himself of the real obligations of 
patriotism. By his diligence, he contributes to the nation's 
wealth ; by his studies, he enlarges the boundaries of her science 
and the stores of her wisdom ; by his virtues, he raises the stand- 
ard of her morals ; by his counsels, he directs her energies to 
lofty and useful aims, to the education of her young, the enlight- 
enment of her old, and the improvement of all; and by his 
example, he stimulates her just ambition, encourages her virtues, 
and elevated her designs. Are these not labors and triumphs 
worthy of ambition — the ambition of a Socrates, a Cato, or a 
Washington — nay, the ambition of a Paul? For the true patriot 
regards this as God's peculiarly chosen and cherished land, and 
so regarding it, his love and reverence become more intense 



30 

and holy. His patriotism is religion — liis politics religion — liis 
ambition religion He recognizes the fact — a sublime one — that 
the equality of the human race — equal rights on earth — an equal 
destiny in heaven — was first taught by Christianity; that the 
hopes of the republican are dreams, idle, shadowy and fatal, 
unless sustained by the faith of the Christian ; that the patriot- 
ism is false which leans only on earth ; that the ambition is 
mean which pauses this side of heaven ; that he cannot love his 
country who will not love his God — and that 

"He is a freeman -whom the truth makes free; 
And all are slaves beside." 

He is deficient in wisdom or patriotism, who is not willing to 
say, with Ohver Cromwell: "If any man thinks that the inte- 
rest of these nations and the interest of Christianity are two 
separate and distinct things, I wish my soul may never enter 
into his secret." Or with Bacon :— " Man when he resteth and 
assureth himself upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a 
peace and faith which human nature, in itself, could not obtain. 
As it is in particular persons, so it is in nations : never Avas 
there such a state for magnanimity as Rome ; of this State hear 
what Cicero saith: — " Quam volumus, licet, patres conscripti, 
nos amemus, tamen nee numero Hispanos, nee rohore Gfallos, nee 
calliditatePoenos, nee artihus Crrcecos, nee denique Jjfc ipso hujus 
gentis et terrce domestieo nativoque sensu Italos ipsos et Latinos; 
sed pietate, ac religione, atque hac una sapiejitia, quod deorum 
immortalium numiiie omnia regi, gubernarique perspcximus, 
omnes gentes nationesque superavimus.'' 



31 

But I will trespass no further upon your patience. 

Vive, Tale. Si quid novisti rectius istis, 
Candidus imperti ; si non, his utere mecum. 

The world is all before you, where to choose. Upon that 
choice depend the destinies, to you, not merely of time, but, it 
may be, of eternal ages. Your life emerges now from the clois- 
ter to the open day, like the spring that bursts upon the summit 
of the Allegheny — on whose first impulse of motion d-epends 
which moiety of a continent it shall traverse, which sea it shall 
seek and mingle with forever. The counsels of this moment will 
revisit you, with applause or reproach, when the eye that now 
flashes, with fiery confidence, along the vista of the Future, shall 
be dimly turned upon a chequered Past. Age, forgetting the unre- 
turning ocean that sweeps between them, reverts ever to youth ; 
and the mind, in its decay, dwells, with proud joy or querulous 
^ penitence, upon the first steps and stages of its long pilgrimage. 
As the hills around your Alma Mater, which the morning sun 
gilds with its glory, are, in its decline, when all the wide valley 
is shaded with twilight or lost in darkness, the last upon which 
its reluctant light lingers— so the- spirit, in its setting, clings, 
with a wierd power of memory, to the scenes and companion- 
ships, the toils and triumphs of its morning, towering up, 
crowned with light, amid the darkened waste of life. May 
that memory be reflected back upon the departing spirit in 
light— the light of lofty purposes, nobly fulfilled ! The same 
being is, in diff"erent stages of his life, so changed in himself, 
and so altered by the lights in which he is viewed, as to well 



32 

nigh, seem, even to his own introspected vision, a different 
creature : when that time [now thought so remote, but so soon 
to be reached,] shall have arrived with you — winning, on its way, 
by a life of honor, an age of peace — may the old man of that 
future — throwing back his whitened hairs, and smiling through 
joyful tears — acquit the youth of to-day, and hail, with renewed 
confidence, the immortal hope of his morrow ! 



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